THE chairman of the local health trust has pledged to turn it around after it was damned in a scathing report from health watchdogs the Care Quality Commission.
Listing a catalogue of failings, the CQC has issued what’s known as a Section 29A notice demanding improvements at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust within five weeks.
Failure to do so could see Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch, Kidderminster General Hospital and Worcestershire Royal Hospital, taken over by another, better performing, Trust.
Inspectors catalogued cases of:
* Poor infection control by staff.
* Undressed patients awaiting surgery in theatre gowns being seen by members of the opposite sex – and visitors.
* Patients on trolleys in A&E corridors had no privacy.
* Such was the bed shortage that women could be having a miscarriage in a mixed sex ward bay.
* During their visit 54 painkiller tablets went missing from one ward and were unaccounted for.
* No plan to improve patient dignity and privacy in A&E.
* In some cases a lack of appropriate equipment should a patient’s condition deteriorate.
* Doses of time critical medicine not given to patients at the correct time.
* Patients at risk of harm from equipment that had not be services or tested.
Underpinning it all was a lack of discipline and rigour by staff in carrying risk assessments for patients and highlighted the failure to complete vital paperwork on patient history.
<img src=”https://redditchstandard.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/caragh-merrick-upright.jpg” alt=”” width=”296″ height=”375″ class=”size-full wp-image-51369″ /> Back to basics: Caragh Merrick.
Inspectors also highlighted the lack of staff: On three occasions a paediatric nurse was seen leaving her ward – and her sick patients – for a total of 56 minutes.
In A&E at Worcestershire Royal the number of A&E consultants on duty fell below Royal College guidelines.
In the wake of the report chairman Caragh Merrick, in post since September, pledged to go ‘back to basics’ in a drive to raise standards right across the board to meet the CQC’s deadline of March 10.
She highlighted that the trust had undergone years of temporary management and that this had worked its way down to grassroots level among staff.
“When you are only here for six months you have no real interest in the development of people for the long term,” she said.
However she added she had appointed a substantive chief executive, Australian Michelle McKay, as well as a new chief medical officer, chief finance officer and chief nursing officer who would be working with staff to implement improvements.
“This is about all our staff recognising that the trust clearly has to solve its own problems and we do this by empowering people to improve their own performance.
“All they need is the encouragement and support to do that – this has got to be a collectively led organisation.”
And she staff had responded by voicing their support for the trust and their determination to move forward.
“This has allowed them to have a mirror shown up to their faces, this is about our failings but we have some great people here and they can do this and I am confident that they will.”
Mrs Merrrick added that she plans to issue hold monthly bulletins and possibly a video diary to enable the public to judge and view the progress the trust makes on its road to improvement.
